Technocracy
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Josh Marshall & Historical Vacuum Syndrome
Josh Marshall has created a firestorm among his liberal readership by coming out pretty strongly against the Manning and Snowden leaks. I think he gives a thoughtful, honest justification for his views, and the key to it is explained in these three paragraphs: If you see the state as essentially malevolent or a bad actor
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Data Mining
David Simon, the creator of HBO's "The Wire" says this about the Snowden leaks: The question is not should the resulting data exist. It does. And it forever will, to a greater and greater extent. And therefore, the present-day question can’t seriously be this: Should law enforcement in the legitimate pursuit of criminal activity pretend
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Verax: Loners Telling Truths
My two cents on the Snowden leak: Of course, I'm among those who admire his courage, and I am temperamentally inclined to side with whoever takes it upon himself to subvert the technocracy. But it seems a quixotic gesture, and one that is not likely to change anything. It's too bad that the Tea Party
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America’s “Education Crisis”
Linda Darling Hammond in a recent interview: Well, there are a couple of things to know before we talk about the scores. First of all, the United States has more children living in poverty, by a long shot, than any other industrialized nation. Right now about one in four children are living in poverty. In most
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Ravitch Thought Experiment
Diane Ravitch today: Suppose you wanted to destroy public education. Suppose you wanted to make it so unpleasant to be a teacher or a student in a public school that everyone began to long for a way out. What would you do? Let’s see. You would subject kids to tests repeatedly to the point that
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Pushing Back against Technocratic Groupthink in Public Schools
Anthony Cody at Education Week: The trouble with Groupthink, as Janis points out, is that it can be disastrously wrong. Once we get swept up into this momentum, and more and more of our values and livelihoods hinge on this set of beliefs, it becomes harder and harder to break away. And with this particular set
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Technocratic v. Humanistic Education 1
The growing rush and the disappearance of contemplation and simplicity from modern life [are] the symptoms of a complete uprooting of culture. The waters of religion retreat and leave behind pools and bogs. The sciences . . . atomize old beliefs. The civilized classes and nations are swept away by the grand rush for contemptible